Kyle Akin is a veteran, business owner and a Grants Pass native.

Listen in as Kyle openly shares his successes and challenges during the pandemic and his encouraging words to business owners in the community and those who want to own a business in the future.

To learn more about Crescendo Spirits and their fine products ➡️https://www.crescendospirits.com/

Also, be sure and head over to your liqueur store in town and pickup some of their fine products. 😃

Transcription

Brian: Kyle Akin is a marine veteran who went to school to be a civil engineer. He fell in love with the Rogue Valley back in 2008 and knew he needed to create an opportunity greater than that of an employee if he wanted to live here. So he started Crescendo Spirits and then a few years later, Double Taps and Grants Pass.

He's been living in the Rogue Valley on and off since 2008 with the goal of eventually living here full time when Kyle married his wife, a GP local six years ago, he's been living here since.

On top of all that they'll be having their first son in the upcoming weeks ahead. That's exciting.

Kyle Aiken, welcome to Grants Pass VIP.

Kyle: Thanks for having me on the show.

Brian: Good deal. So other than what I already mentioned, is there anything else that you'd like to say about yourself and where people might know you from?

Kyle: Oh, just that I've been going to Club Northwest and I'm sure a lot of people know me from there and obviously from working at Double Taps for two years, a lot of people have come through and we've had a lot of events and we raised a lot of money for local efforts and events.

With Double Taps we really tried to integrate ourselves into what Grants Pass was doing. Might knw me from there.

Brian: Very cool. So, how did you end up here? What's your life story up until this point?

Kyle: Well, I grew up in Northern California and native Mendocino County, five and a half hours from here.

Still have a mother that lives down in Laytonville, then joined the Marine Corps at 17.

Traveled the world a bit, was a Marine Embassy Guard was in the Marine Corps for five years overseas for about seven. After I got in the Marine Corps. I drove to Panama, went to Florida State there because I wanted to go back to Panama after the Marine Corps and worked on getting my degree.

My Dad always kind of had that plan for me growing up, "you're going to go serve your country, you're going to earn the right to vote and do right by your country. Then after that you're going to use those benefits and go to college and get a degree."

That was the life path I had for me for years. Got my civil engineer degree from Florida State to work for a large civil engineering firm there, Jacobs Engineering.

Then I transferred back to the Pacific Northwest.

So I went back to Bellevue Washington. And while I was up there working doing a lot of construction management stuff, civil engineering, since that's my emphasis, discovered the Rogue Valley because I had a childhood friend that was living down in Talent and came on down there and discovered what a summer was like again.

You know, because living in Seattle, you don't get a you don't get a lot of summer and going from places like Florida, where it's sunshine all day, and then go on and work at night for six months in Bellevue, Washington. In the middle of winter, kind of a bit of a contrast.

That summer I was rolled on down here on my motorcycle and saw my buddy and that was 2007 and fell in love with the place and decided I need to learn how to be down here. You need to figure it out.

So I got a civil engineering job down in a Rogue Valley and moved down shortly thereafter.

Unfortunately, the market crashed, shortly thereafter, right around 2008-2009. But I was in my master's program got an MBA from Southern Oregon University.

In the meantime, I got laid off from my civil engineering job because all the construction kind of disappeared,